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© Giovanni Sinico
© Giovanni Sinico
© Giovanni Sinico
© Giuseppe Toffoli
© Giuseppe Toffoli

Giuseppe Toffoli

  • Eyewear maker
  • Padua, Italy
  • Master Artisan
Giuseppe Toffoli Eyewear maker
Contact
Italian, English
Hours:
Tuesday to Saturday 09:00 - 13:00/15:30 - 19:30
Phone:
+39 049613909
© Giovanni Sinico

An eye for detail

  • • Giuseppe was inspired by his parents and grandparents
  • • He’s creating new eco-friendly materials
  • • He was born in Cadore in Italy, the world's capital for eyewear

Giuseppe Toffoli has had a peculiar professional journey. He graduated in Orthoptics before doing a master’s degree in Vision Sciences. Throughout university, he worked as a family optician and was lucky enough to learn a lot from his parents and his grandfather. The current work of creating bespoke eyewear stems from his personal predisposition for manual skills and a passion for handcrafted artistic objects. What he does today is the result of many years of work. As time went by, he realised that the evolution of the market and the eyewear industry was causing the artisan optician to disappear in favour of the optician-retailer, so he decided to take up what his grandparents did: making eyeglasses by hand.

Read the full interview

Works

  • © Giuseppe Toffoli
  • © Giuseppe Toffoli
  • © Giuseppe Toffoli
  • © Giuseppe Toffoli
  • © Giuseppe Toffoli
Photo: © Giuseppe Toffoli
Still Time One

Still Time One is a series of handcrafted eyewear available in water buffalo horn, precious woods or in cellulose acetate as in this case. The series includes a round, square, oval and rectangular pair of glasses. All production steps are manual, but polishing is the strongest point, made with cotton discs and very fine abrasive pastes. Metal parts such as nose pads or hinges can be made from 18-k gold, silver, pure titanium or stainless steel.

Height 4.2 cm
Width 13.8 cm

Photo: © Giuseppe Toffoli
Still Time Horn

This pair of unique glasses are handcrafted from Indian water buffalo horn, one of the most natural materials for eyewear. Giuseppe Toffoli also uses 18-k gold for the decorations and hinges of this piece. The glasses are part of Giuseppe’s Still Time series, a tribute to Tchaikovsky and his concerto op. 35, and are engraved with a violin scroll on the end of the temples.

Height 6 cm
Width 13.8 cm

Photo: © Giuseppe Toffoli
Wintertime

An elegant lady came to Giuseppe Toffoli looking for a pair of glasses that would fit her face perfectly with a rigorous and decisive design, warm colours and bright points. Giuseppe studied her character, her face shape, her eyebrows, her nose and designed these handcrafted glasses. To increase comfort, he took the necessary measures to build them as tailored as possible. Giuseppe chose to use cellulose acetate for its characteristics of colours and tones.

Height 4.4 cm
Width 13.5 cm

Photo: © Giuseppe Toffoli
Surprise Blues

The design for these unique handcrafted glasses, with simple but thick lines, was inspired by eyewear design of the 1970s. Giuseppe Toffoli wanted to lighten them and make them modern by playing with colours. The customer's favourites were blue and black, resulting in a modern but at the same time classic eyewear. The material chosen to build it was Italian cellulose acetate.

Height 7 cm
Width 14.2 cm

Photo: © Giuseppe Toffoli
Cico

Cico is a pair of black hue eyewear, handcrafted from water buffalo horn, inspired by the designs of the 1980s. Taking measurements of the customer's face allows Giuseppe Toffoli to obtain a very large and very comfortable pair of eyewear. The curves and thickness of the glasses have been made to fit particular ophthalmic lenses prescribed by the ophthalmologist.

Height 5.5 cm
Width 14.2 cm

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